Purpose

It's not all about the coffee. Here's how we engage with the world around us, who we support and what we stand for as a company. You could say these are our bearings:

Local non-profits

In our hometown of Philadelphia, we support the National Services Center (NSC) and City Kitties.

NSC is Philadelphia's leading immigrant and refugee service organization empowering individuals to build a self-sustaining and dignified future. For more on what they do, please visit: https://nscphila.org/

City Kitties is a cat shelter that rescues cats, provides vet care and ultimately a home. We adopted a crazy rogue now named Hugo from them. In 2018, we launched a product called 'Santa Claws' in support of City Kitties. 'Santa Claws' returns in 2019. Learn about them here: http://www.citykitties.org/

Art & Research

Everyone loves some form of art, whether it's visual, auditory or performance. At Bearings, our products are brought to life by commissioning artists to design our coffee characters. In addition to commissions, we aim to support artists in coffee producing countries through commissioned public art works. In 2019, we will do a visual arts project in Haiti, which we’ll share with you once complete.

As the company grows, we aim to support researchers with their work in coffee producing countries. In many coffee producing countries, there isn't sufficient information available to help a variety of stakeholders make better decisions for coffee communities. Our founder experienced this first hand when he lived in Haiti. When we begin a research project, we’ll share it with you.

Light pollution

For centuries, the explorers, the thinkers, and the curious looked to the sky for guidance and direction: It's how people found their bearings. Due to light pollution, it’s more difficult to do so today because the sky is harder to see.

The International Dark Skies Initiative (IDA) wants to uncover the cosmos, so you too can see the stars. IDA has created what’s called ‘Dark Sky Parks’, and over the next five years (2017 to 2022) we endeavor to launch a Dark Sky park in a coffee producing country. It's a tall order, but this is our dream project. As it comes together we'll announce updates via our monthly newsletter.